1. Field of the Invention
Aspects of the present invention relate to methods and systems for segmenting data and performing analysis on the segmented data. In particular, aspects of the present invention relate to segmenting television audience data based on the audience's viewing patterns through the use of audience data.
2. Background of the Related Art
Typically, in researching television audiences' viewing patterns, companies, such as Nielsen Media Research, capture respondent level data for the members of their national people meter panel, e.g., raw data, by monitoring which television programs television audiences are viewing during a particular time period. Thus, it is possible to gather, for any given time period, information regarding which television programs a viewer is watching (alternatively referred to herein as “audience data”). Advertising agencies and media companies generally use this audience data to plan and transact deals for commercial advertising time and to decide what products to advertise during television programming. However, the data used by the companies is typically based upon broad generalizations and/or groupings of demographic information associated with the audience data. Thus, the relevancy of the advertising messages may not be optimized to a majority of the viewers watching the television program at a given time.
In addition, in researching television audiences' viewing patterns, data may be gathered using surveys asking television viewers questions regarding the amount of television each viewer watches and/or the types of programs the viewer watches. These surveys capture the viewer's “claimed viewing data” regarding the amount of television and/or the various programming that the viewer watches by, for example, having the viewer provide responses to relevant questions. However, when comparing the viewer's “claimed viewing data” against the audience data, the claimed viewing data typically does not match the audience data. This discrepancy between the “claimed viewing data” and the audience data may be caused by viewers remembering incorrectly the amount of time they spent watching television, failing to remember the programs that they watched, and/or entering different programming names than the programs they actually watched, for example. Thus, the “claimed viewing data” entered by the viewer is typically unreliable and/or inaccurate when measured against the gold standard of audience data.
There remains a need in the art, therefore, for methods and systems for segmenting television viewing data based upon programming level viewing for identifying viewers with similar viewing patterns of television programming. There also remains a need in the art for methods and systems for performing analysis on the segmented data and providing targeted marketing based upon the analysis.